It is not necessary for Congress to do anything to end the Section 230 protections for social media providers. Those protections expired long ago and are no longer in force. The protections from liability afforded by 230 apply to sites or services that are acting as common carriers, like an email provider or your cellular provider (both in terms of SMS texts and phone calls). A common carrier does not pick and choose which communications are carried by content. They all go through.
Section 230 does not apply to publications. An internet site or service that curates or edits its content is a publication. This makes it essentially the same as a publication like the New York Times. Anything written on the pages of the NYT confers liability for that statement on the NYT.
When the social media began censoring views they don't like, they stopped being common carriers and became publications. There is nothing stopping lawsuits from proceeding other than the mistaken belief that lawsuits are impossible. Let them fly!
This, in fact, is a good thing, if we ever want to get back to a world in which people who have "unacceptable" viewpoints, in the words of the Canadian fuehrer, are able to communicate them just as easily as anyone else, 230 provides them a strong incentive to do so. Stop curating, editing, censoring, and "fact" checking people's content, or be liable for every video, every post, every tweet, every image that every person worldwide posts on your service.
It is not necessary for Congress to do anything to end the Section 230 protections for social media providers. Those protections expired long ago and are no longer in force. The protections from liability afforded by 230 apply to sites or services that are acting as common carriers, like an email provider or your cellular provider (both in terms of SMS texts and phone calls). A common carrier does not pick and choose which communications are carried by content. They all go through.
Section 230 does not apply to publications. An internet site or service that curates or edits its content is a publication. This makes it essentially the same as a publication like the New York Times. Anything written on the pages of the NYT confers liability for that statement on the NYT.
When the social media began censoring views they don't like, they stopped being common carriers and became publications. There is nothing stopping lawsuits from proceeding other than the mistaken belief that lawsuits are impossible. Let them fly!
This, in fact, is a good thing, if we ever want to get back to a world in which people who have "unacceptable" viewpoints, in the words of the Canadian fuehrer, are able to communicate them just as easily as anyone else, 230 provides them a strong incentive to do so. Stop curating, editing, censoring, and "fact" checking people's content, or be liable for every video, every post, every tweet, every image that every person worldwide posts on your service.